The Area Air Defense Commander (AADC) Capability was recently employed during Millennium Challenge 2002, a joint war fighting experiment bringing together both live field forces and computer simulation at several locations in the United States from July 24 to August 15, 2002.
More than 13,500 U.S. military and civilian personnel participated in this event which was congressionally directed in the 2001 National Defense Authorization Act to explore critical war fighting challenges at the operational level of war that will confront United States joint military forces in the future.
AADC is a Naval Sea Systems Command program managed by the Program Executive Office for Theater Surface Combatants.
AADC Capability is a state of the art, integrated, Theater Air Defense (TAD) battle management system. It supports performance of centralized, distributive collaborative planning, and decentralized execution of TAD in support of Joint Force Commander objectives. It performs two basic functions, air defense planning and current operations support.
The robust, collaborative air defense planning capability greatly reduces time and manpower required, and an advanced war gaming capability evaluates and compares courses of action, and performs rapid re-planning in minutes as theater events develop.
These functions were previously performed manually by using grease pencils, acetate, manual calculations, days of preparatory work, etc. and weeks to develop a plan. To perform a modification of a plan was a long and tedious job as well. AADC Capability has shortened these functions to hours and minutes.
For current operations support AADC provides a high resolution, near real to real-time, integrated 3-D air picture display to provide rapid situational awareness by an operational commander.
During the Millennium Challenge 2002 event, an AADC command center was established utilizing the AADC Capability system installed at the General Dynamics Automated Information Systems facility in Greensboro, North Carolina.
An AADC prototype was also a part of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) carrier battle group when it went to sea last month. AADC is aboard one the battle group's cruisers, USS Shiloh (CG 67). Other AADC units are installed in the Second Fleet flagship USS Mount Whitney (LCC 20) and the Seventh Fleet flagship USS Blue Ridge (LCC 19).
-ends- AADC Battle Management System Employed During Millennium Challenge 2002
